Final Minutes 2003/11/17 QAWG Telcon

Final Minutes

QA Working Group Teleconference
Monday, 17-November-2003
--
Scribe: Andrew Thackrah

Attendees:
(PC) Patrick Curran (Sun Microsystems)
(LH) Lofton Henderson (CGMO - WG co-chair)
(LR) Lynne Rosenthal (NIST - IG co-chair)
(MS) Mark Skall (NIST)
(AT) Andrew Thackrah (Open Group)
(VV) Vanitha Venkatraman (Sun Microsystems)

Regrets: (dd) Dimitris Dimitriadis (Ontologicon)
(DH) Dominique Hazaël-Massieux (W3C)
(SM) Sandra Martinez (NIST)
(KD) Karl Dubost (W3C, WG co-chair)

Absent: (KG) Kirill Gavrylyuk (Microsoft)

Guest:
(DM) David Marston (IBM)

Agenda: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-qa-wg/2003Nov/0045.html

Previous Telcon Minutes: 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-qa-wg/2003Nov/0023.html


Minutes:

1.) roll call 11am EST, membership

See above.

2.) Any routine business
- 8 Dec. guest-chair/guest topic?  [DHM or KD] - both regrets - LH to 
handle offline

- guest-chair assignments & AIs
LR: Can I swap dates with LH?

LH: Yes, swapping dates is fine (generally).

LR: Also does today count for me, and Mark's TestGL chair for him?

LH: No, the guest chairs are for topics outside the normal agenda.

LH: AT -  do you want to do it? e.g. about certification etc - it would be 
next September but you could do one before September.

AT: yes - add me to the list


3.) SpecGL selling points

- LR draft proposal


LR: to reply to LH - who is this for? Should we have a separate doc on 
web? or just snippets to grab as needed?	 
Is this the right scope - any gaps? etc

Consider intended use: could be multi-purpose, but we should target it. 
what are the selling points?

LH: The original idea for this came from Daniel as an IG topic. He thought 
we should discuss production of brief selling points (maybe 5 or 6). So 
perhaps we should contact Daniel for comments.

LR: Karl also had some ideas - when talking to WGs. We still need to know 
'what should we do with this?'
Does anyone see this as a published document on the web? e.g. Patrick  - 
WAE has reasons-for documents, short, just a few pages or just a set of 
bullet items.

My feeling -is keep it short & sweet - not 'yet another doc.' ... perhaps 
a cheat sheet

AT: So could we aim for a different medium to communicate our rationale? - 
such as a presentation/slides.

LH: Maybe have two incarnations - web and presentation. A while ago Karl 
had an idea - should we have a QA quickstart guide? a bit of prose - but 
mainly an index to other resources. Pointing to progressively more detail. 
E.g. #1 selling points,..., #n gritty details e.g. framework docs.

LR: That would be nice but it is a different topic

LH: If we do it as a web page?

DM: I envision a Web page, among other incarnations, that is easily cited. 
(Like "XML in 10 Points") There could be a similar page for TestGL when 
the time comes. It would not attempt to sell its readers on the need to 
read the whole Guidelines document, just make them aware that such a thing 
exists.

LR: Again this is more like Karl's idea, a different thing

LH: Maybe we could link a web page out of our bibliography. Next published 
version of SpecGL would also link to it

LR: Yes I would think so. The idea is to convince people to use SpecGL - 
so if the link is in SpecGL - maybe it would not be picked up.

DM: Could we provide something for Editors to take to their WGs. Editors 
take on role of defending good QA practice - this material may back them 
up.

LR: Do you see the Spec editor is audience? or are they stake holders?

DM: Spec editor would seriously read specGL. This  material could help 
editor defend actions against WG critics of extra workload.

AT: How do we communicate to unconverted, they probably won't seek out our 
web site so what channels can we use to ensure this material gets through?

MS: We need a link higher than QA in the W3C site

DM: E.g. in a page on 'how to chair a WG'?

MS : Useful, but only prospective chairs would see this

LR: We want it on pages other than QA. These would be talking points for 
presentations.

LH: Other propagators: QA moderators (when available), maybe an 'editors' 
list?. (Dimitris listed editors last year for example) or Com via Com 
liason.

LR: Yes that would be good.

LH: One overall comment. repeated phrase 'QA' - everyone will buy into a 
claim that 'QA' is good - so we need it to be more specific to SpecGL. So 
first section  should be explicit about specification quality.

LR: The first section - it's cute but should we keep it?

[no objections]

LR: "FACT: ..." How about this?

MS: The percentage figure is arbitrary. Is the reference to an in depth 
study?

LR: It was a study of a large project

LH: I would drop "FACT...". 
MS: "CLAIM:..." weakens the text: beef it up e.g. "it is not well known 
that.."

LR: "It helps ensure..." what?

DM: For "provides:" 'collective wisdom of many past groups like yours'


AT: Should we mention interoperability or conformance here?

LH: Maybe under "helps ensure"? 
DM: It doesn't help - but makes one conscious of weakness!


LR: "different stakeholders..."

[this section generally favoured]


DM: Also End user can benefit - 
PC: Yes, gives more choice through interoperability

AT: End users are not really SpecGL stakeholders though 
PC: But they do benefit. maybe stakeholder is too corporate. Perhaps just 
use 'who benefits'

LR: Yes, so now we can add End users to 'who benefits'

LR: "QA is important...": any comments?

LH: Refocus all bits & title away from general QA to SpecGL in particular

LH: "When do QA.." section - I think this is redundant

LR: suits me to lose it.


DM: Can we mention errata avoidance? - 'do it right first time!'

LH: It's sort of implicit

LR: I'll rework to mention this explicitly

LR: "when to use it" section - comments?

LH: overall this doc. is about how to use it... so maybe not relevant


MS: It's worth having - SpecGL is used at several points in WG process

AT: Is that really a selling it though?

DM: We could say that SpecGL focusses action throughout lifecycle...

MS: Yes, it can be turned around to make it a selling point..

LR: A quickstart is needed: this section is based on that..

LR: I will draft another version - please contribute suggestions. I will 
work towards talking points rather than prose - will maintain this level 
of verbiage for now but will focus on content.


LH: REMINDER - next week we meet Wednesday, not Monday


Adjourned

Received on Thursday, 27 November 2003 05:21:59 UTC